The Finnish Supercell based in Helsinki is known for its tremendous success in the mobile gaming market. She has released such hits as Clash of Clans , Clash Royale , Boom Beach and Hay Day . For 2017, the fiscal year, the company received $ 810 million in profits and $ 2 billion in revenue.

But the reason for success was the difference from the way other companies worked. Supercell did everything “upside down” - in fact, the company is managed by creative people, and management is trying not to interfere with them.

After many years of work in companies with the “right” structure, such as Digital Chocolate, CEO of Supercell Ilkka Paananen argues that traditional gaming companies are successful not because of their structure, but in spite of it.

Supercell model

If you are not familiar with the organizational structure of Supercell, then I will explain how it works: each of the teams (“cell” - cell) of 10-17 game developers working on their game.
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They do not have to wait until the manager approves their decisions; there are no planners after each development stage where teams are required to justify the existence of their project before the financial department. If necessary, teams can "kill" their games and move on to the next. All creative decisions are made by teams.

In his report at GDC 2018, Paananen said: “The idea here is the lack of a centralized process. Each team has its own ways of working. ” He realized that the games that had been successful under his leadership at Digital Chocolate were developed by teams that worked with each other particularly well; the games were released at exactly the right time (which depended heavily on luck). He also added: "The less management had to do with the game, the higher the chances of success were."


Traditional corporate organizational structure

What is the role of management in this ordinary structure? Creating an excellent team and its support to facilitate its achievement of success.

It is good, when in some cases the leadership goes out of the way - despite good intentions, managers can sometimes interfere with great success. Paananen said that he had doubts about Clash Royale - the game Supercell, which has become one of the biggest hits, not only on mobile devices, but in general among all platforms.

“I didn’t really believe in the original prototype of what eventually turned into the Clash Royale ,” admitted Paananen in an interview with Gamasutra. “I was one of those who quite late realized that this was a fantastic game. But I remind myself why we exist. We are trying to build this brand new company. ”

Another example of business decisions made by developers was another hit game Supercell - Boom Beach , which many of the company's employees also doubted.

During the development process, the team leaders met to discuss the game - they wanted to roll it all but one - the lead of Boom Beach .

The team continued to create the game, despite the brutal frankness of others and almost unanimous skepticism. And she became a hit.

It’s hard not to think about what everyone else thinks when someone says “everything will be like this”. Paananen believes that even when the voting results turn out to be the same as in the case of Boom Beach , the main priority is still the preservation of the company's culture, which places the responsibility on the decision maker on the game development manager.

“We can choose one of two ways,” he told us. “The first, in which the majority can win and just kill the game, when nine out of ten people believe that it needs to be killed. And this may be the right decision — perhaps the best business decision.

But at the same time, even if it is the right decision from a business point of view, the loss of our culture will be the price paid for it. We will no longer be able to say that we have a culture of independence and responsibility. ”


Supercell model

He considers such situations in the long term: in five to ten years the failure of the game will no longer be important, but its creators will learn the lessons, and the culture will be preserved, which will make it possible to achieve success in the future.

Paananen adds: “The other way is that we let the team do its work, even if we don’t believe in its success. But at least, when they finish it, they will learn something. But the most important thing is that we preserve our culture. ”

Tayko Tahkkallio, lead developer of the Hay Day game, told in another interview that teams do not form around the idea of ​​the game. The priority is always the creation of a strong team. “We connect the team and make it work well. And she herself decides what she wants to do. The team - first of all, the idea - in the second, and nothing else.

Independence and responsibility mean commitment, and, according to Paananen, this can lead to stressful situations for teams and individual developers.

Although they get all the glory if they succeed, they are responsible for failures. One of the drawbacks of the structure is the pressure arising in this case, but it seems that it is a natural side effect of this model.

Another problem in the Supercell model, according to Paananen, is that due to the small size of teams, workloads are often exhausting. 10-17 people are not omnipotent.


Paananen admits that in a company where decisions are made by creative teams, there is sometimes a temptation to move in a traditional style with centralized management, despite the success of Supercell in the current model. Studios wishing to try the Supercell model must resist this temptation.

“The traditional approach is constantly trying to return. We have to fight him every day. The interesting thing is that the more successful you become, the harder it is to counter it, ”he says.